Everything a good book of the romantic era should be. Poetic, moving, and amusing for how completely over-the-top the characters are (including, of course, the expected, “We just met an hour ago, so I love you and I’d die for you and pine away forever if you ever left me” type of love).

Drank Townshend’s Soaring Crane the other night while reading Phoebe North’s Starglass in a single sitting. Dystopian YA novel with some cultural/social twists—a Jewish-centered generational spaceship journey, letters from a gay greatgreatgreatetc.-grandmother, a teenage girl whose sexual curiosity isn’t tamped down. Pacing was kind of inconsistent but some of the writing was very pretty. Gonna be frustrating waiting for Book 2.

I’ve moved onto a collection of essays by Tim Kreider called We Know Nothing. I don’t even remember who recommended it to me anymore but I am really enjoying it. Some of my favourite non-fiction reads have been topical essays and his sense of humour is working for me right now.

Currently reading Stephen King’s The Stand. So far it is excellent! I previously read “It” by SK, and this is living up to that just as well! Perk’s of Being a Wallflower is another I read recently and it is probably one of my all time favourites now because it was so simple and so striking

I’m about 2/3 of the way through Xenocide, the third book I the Ender’s Game quartet. The fourth one is over there on a table, staring me down. “Reeeead faaaasteeeeerrr…”
Anyway. I mostly read while nursing, which doesn’t give me any spare hands to drink tea with, but occasionally I’ll get to when she goes down for a nap. :)

You know those Camel type devices that cyclists use in order to drink water whilst…ah, cycling? Don’t you think that would be perfect for nursing mums? Especially if they were revamped to hold hot tea, and keep it hot, but not horribly hot…!

Haha. I keep telling people that when I have kids I will read my books aloud to them until they’re old enough to catch on. That way I still get reading time and we still get bonding time.

On a serious note though, my Mum read me ‘serious’ classics when I was 6 and 7 onward and I loved it. I loved feeling like I was reading a grown-up book with her. It was a great experience. Hopefully my kids will be readers like me!

Enders Game was my very first favorite sci-fi series. I need to read them again cause it has been sooo long! Speaking of reading books to your kids, my father, oh gee, what a dude. He is a self-taught programmer. got in before the days when college degrees were absolutely required, so guess what books he was reading about the time I was born? He had no time he had to read anything else, so you can imagine what he read to me as a baby, before I could ‘understand.’ He talks about it all the time, how i used to smile and giggle at him. . .what a thing for him to do! It certainly didn’t get me into computer science. I love every sort of math and science except for programming, imagine that.

@Serenity: Hahaha!! That would be great! Do we have any inventors here on Steepster? Get cracking!
@Uniquity: Yep, I’m also determined to get in some older type books with my kids, too. Start with things like Anne of Green Gables and other books that use a more proper language, then maybe get to Little House On the Prairie, and Little Women. Good quality reading that I liked when I was younger. :)
@Shelley: Sounds a lot like my dad, who taught us to play chess as soon as we were tall enough to reach the coffee table. The funny thing that he would do when reading to my sisters and me was read the copyright page.

You have lovely taste in read-alouds! I started reading C.S. Lewis to my son as soon as he could follow it. The Redwall series by Brian Jacques is great for adult-and-child teams, too. (Lots of swashbuckling adventure to keep the reader-out-loud interested!)

To be quite honest I don’t remember my mother reading to me but she must have. I know that by grade one I was reading chapter books and was reading books from the adult section by grade two. My mom and I did read a lot together though. Quiet afternoons curled up in the living room. We’d swap books and then talk about them. Kind of an in house book club.

I was an early reader as well. I have notes from my teacher in Primary thanking me for reading to the class as I learned before school. When I was younger they still marked our books with reading levels and I remember being at least 4 or 5 ‘levels’ (years, basically) ahead and being annoyed because the teachers would make me read ‘age appropriate’ books for school. Grr!

How frustrating! I was lucky enough to have teachers who were willing to run several levels of reading and spelling in one class, and we were able to read whatever we wanted for projects and book reports.

Lately, have been binge-reading Anne Perry: Victoran-era mysteries featuring Inspector Thomas Pitt and his lovely and cultured wife Charlotte, who married him below her station. And plenty of good tea :)
Scratches the Downton Abbey itch while we wait.

She’s also written a WWI mystery series featuring a trio of siblings; also quite good.

My neighbour just came over and said he and his wife were going to bring a lot of books to the used book store, but I could come and pick through them before they shipped them out. I went over and there were 8 large boxes of books. I have a lot of reading to do (not to mention by basement full of books). Good thing I have a lot of tea. Most excited for The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.